February 2010 Archives

What a fantastic finish. I'm only now coming up for air, having flown above cloud 9 since Sidney Crosby scored in overtime to beat the USA and win Canada's record-breaking 14th gold medal. That scream you heard when Crosby potted the winner was mine.

I watched this game with the people I love the most in the world, and as we headed into overtime, I openly hoped Crosby would get the winner. I'm a big fan, a big believer, and I knew nothing would shut up his detractors faster than a gold medal winning goal. Now, we have a moment like this stitched into our cultural fabric, and there is no undo button. Nothing can take this away from us. This is our moment.

When I'm on my deathbed, hopefully many decades from now, I'm going to remember this day. I'm going to remember it starting at 8am when I woke up my son for his championship game, a game he'd win, and ending with this euphoric feeling of national pride because we're #1. This is our game, on our ice, and now it's our gold and our podium.

I awoke this morning with an eerily calm feeling. When I woke up James, I told him about my feeling. I just felt good about the day ahead... as if good things were going to happen.

James was playing for the Swansea Hockey Association Novice Division Championship of the world. Before the game, the ISP dressing room was a mad house. The jams were pumping, the speeches were flowing and everyone was sugaring up with Timbits. James, as displayed in this pre-game video I took, shared my eerie calmness.

ISP won the hard fought game 3-1 and the party began. First, in the great tradition started by the 1980s Edmonton Oilers, there was the team photo on the ice with the trophy.

James loves being a champion, and was pleased his mom, sister and grandmother made it out for his big moment.

In the dressing room, it was a scene of sweet relief and celebration. Queen's We Are The Champions bellowed from a boombox, the trophy was passed around, pucks were signed, beer (of the root variety) was guzzled and Coach Gerry was presented with a #4 Bobby Orr jersey. He had to leave the room to cry.

If you were to ask me which game I wanted more, this one or the one at 3pm today, I'd have to go with this one. There's nothing more awesome than watching 7 and 8 year old kids play hard all season and win it all, and I know my son will never forget this feeling. They're playing for pride and a trophy, and today they're true champions.

January 5, 2010 left a bad taste in my mouth. I wrote about it here. It was the first time in six years the Canadian junior team didn't win the gold medal. That day, we fell to the United States 6-5.

Fast forward to last Sunday. In a non-elimination game at these 2010 Olympics, Canada met the United States and this entire nation watched. I watched my team lose again to the Americans, and then came the gloating. It came in tweets, on blogs, in person, fast and furious. Americans came into our house and beat us at our game. This, too, left a bad taste in my mouth.

That's when I started having a revenge fantasy. I wanted the women's hockey gold medal game to be Canada vs. USA with Canada prevailing, and I wanted the exact same scenario to unfold on the men's side. Tomorrow afternoon, I get my wish.

Our women have done their part. They disposed of the Americans 2-0 to secure gold. Tomorrow at 3pm ET, my revenge fantasy comes true. Canada faces the Americans and Canada will prevail.

I'm confident, but I've been pretty cocky this whole tournament. After we narrowly squeaked by Switzerland, I planned a gold medal game party at my house. Tomorrow night I'll get to have my cake, and eat it too.

It's been a crazy day, and soon I'll be playing hockey and watching hockey. But before I logoff for a bit, I've got to share an interesting story about Il Duce.

The story of Il Duce started at the old HumbleHoward.com, a blog that's no longer active but still online so I can link to old entries like this. If you click on over and read the comments, you'll see how I first encountered Il Duce.

Here's his first comment over there regarding the old Humble and Fred 20th anniversary podcast.

Gee sounds like fun!! Getting together on a Saturday and listening to two old farts whose best radio days have passed them by. Reminiscing about the good old days surrounded by a bunch of Trekkie losers who never get out of their houses.

Speaking of fools who is Mike to have his own blog... Toronto Mike, give me a break. He's nothing more than a radio host wanabee whose latched himself on to two other former morning host losers.

Ya I'll be there and then head over to the Bloor Viaduct and do the swan dive.

Il Duce came back a couple of hours later with this comment.

Better yet why don't you have that technical genius Wyle E. Coyote, I mean Toronto 'with no' Mike, replay your podcast on loud speakers every day at the Bloor Viaduct.

I'm sure the Communist Toronto Councillors would love this, so they can remove those beautiful glass barriers. And any jumper that would hear your old screeching voices would run for their lives.

Il Duce's comments became a humourous reference point for Humble and I, and it even made it into the 20th anniversary podcast. Humble read the comment aloud.

Last month, Il Duce returned on this blog as "Mississauga". You can read his comment in this entry.

@T.O. Mike

I see you're making lots of friends Mike.

And tell that hack HumHow he ruined my bit when he mispronounced my name during the Anniversary Podacast in May. It's not 'Il Deuce' but rather 'Il Duce(DO-che)' as in Mussolini.

What is he Bania from Seinfeld? I give him gold and he chopped it up.

Tell him The Boom sounds great but he needs Freddie with him. Loving you.

Today at lunch, I decided to try a nice looking Italian restaurant for the first time. I walk in and 10 seconds later a gentleman introduces himself. It's Il Duce.

Il Duce was very nice, seemed sincerely happy to see me, complimented the blog and ensured a permanent place in my heart by presenting me with a complimentary homemade meat lasagna for me to take home.

If there are no entries tomorrow, the lasagna was poisoned and you should probably alert the authorities.

O ye of little faith, you didn't think we'd have a chance against Russia in the quarter-finals, did you? On Monday, I wrote Poor Russia after connecting the dots and seeing Russia in our sight-lines after a gimme against Germany.

I'll bet the last team Russia wanted to face in the quarters is Canada. Tomorrow night, we'll get another tune-up against Germany, another chance to warm up Roberto Luongo and reset our lines and focus.

It was far better than I dared dream. We dominated the Russians, all but making Ovechkin disappear. The final was 7-3, a true ass-whooping, as we easily earned a berth in the semi-finals against either Sweden or Slovakia. We're but a single win away from the gold medal final.

Heading into these Olympic games, we heard often from the Own the Podium people. Our goal was to finish first. Canadians started to believe the hype and collectively, we raised our expectations. Own the Podium over promised, and they will under deliver.

Let's take a look at the current medal standings.

There are four nations ahead of us, and two of them, United States and Germany, are more than doubling us. Even though Canada will have several great medal opportunities this week, we will not own the podium. We will miss our lofty goal, and this has many Canadians down on our efforts this month in Vancouver.

Canada won 24 medals at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy. That was the best we ever did. A wiser goal for VANOC would have been to top that mark, even though that's looking less and less likely with each passing day.

With ten medals, every other article and news story about these games is centered around our failure to finish first in the medal count. This disappointment is the direct result of Own the Podium's fatal error. They over promised and raised expectations to an unrealistic level. And now that we're under delivering, everyone's in a huff.

We actually sat down to watch Crank: High Voltage. I liked Crank enough to give it 6.5 out of 10, so I figured the sequel might be worth a shot. I was wrong.

We couldn't get through 20 minutes of Crank: High Voltage before switching things up and giving Run Fatboy Run a shot. Run Fatboy Run loses steam about half way through, but it's decent enough. It was precisely the 6.5 out of 10 I was looking for!

1519 Twitter followers
272 RSS subscribers

I swear by my RSS feeds, but I've noted the hesitancy of the "average joe" in adopting this form of syndication. Twitter, on the other hand, seems to be more user friendly... less intimidating.

My friend and colleague Daniel makes an excellent point I believe is worth revisiting. He wrote this comment on this blog exactly one year ago this month.

Here's something that works just fine (RSS), it's a standard supported all over the place and it's essentially universal.

Twitter depends on one closed source company that still pretty much has no idea how to monetize their service (read: unstable), and it's restricted only to people using Twitter, obviously.

It just seems redundant to me: "Hey, RSS blows, I'm going to hook my RSS feed up to Twitter so that people can access my content in the trendiest, most roundabout and restrictive way possible". It's totally inefficient.

Poor Russia. They won a hard fought game against the Czech Republic yesterday to win their Group B and advance straight to the quarter-finals. Their reward? A probable quarter-final game against Canada.

I'll bet the last team Russia wanted to face in the quarters is Canada. Tomorrow night, we'll get another tune-up against Germany, another chance to warm up Roberto Luongo and reset our lines and focus.

Then, it's Canada vs. Russia for a chance to play in the semi-finals. That's going to be awesome.

I'm willing to bet the vast majority of people reading this entry will be watching Canada face the United States tonight in Olympic hockey action. The puck drops at 7:35pm ET and I can't wait.

In this clip from NBC, Tom Brokaw explains the relationship between Canada and the USA, in a pre-recorded short film that aired prior to the Opening Ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver. Americans should watch this before their pummeling tonight, so it hurts just a little less.

You may recall Ok Go's treadmill video for "Here It Goes Again". That clever, homemade video made Ok Go a huge success. They posted it to YouTube in violation of their record contract with EMI but it was viewed tens of millions of times, brought big crowds to their concerts on five continents, and made them and EMI a great deal of money.

Forever I've been baffled by record companies disabling the embed feature on official music videos. They're preventing publishers like me from giving them free advertising, and it forces us to find a poorer quality upload or to share the song set to a picture of the album cover or something much less impressive. It makes no sense to me, and it makes no sense to Kulash.

Embedded videos - those hosted by YouTube but streamed on blogs and other Web sites - don’t generate any revenue for record companies, so EMI disabled the embedding feature. Now we can’t post the YouTube versions of our videos on our own site, nor can our fans post them on theirs. If you want to watch them, you have to do so on YouTube.

But this isn’t how the Internet works. Viral content doesn’t spread just from primary sources like YouTube or Flickr. Blogs, Web sites and video aggregators serve as cultural curators, daily collecting the items that will interest their audiences the most. By ignoring the power of these tastemakers, our record company is cutting off its nose to spite its face.

EMI essentially prohibits the band's video from going viral, from being shared throughout the world, and the results speak for themselves.

The numbers are shocking: When EMI disabled the embedding feature, views of our treadmill video dropped 90 percent, from about 10,000 per day to just over 1,000. Our last royalty statement from the label, which covered six months of streams, shows a whopping $27.77 credit to our account.

Clearly the embedding restriction is bad news for our band, but is it worth it for EMI? The terms of YouTube’s deals with record companies aren’t public, but news reports say that the labels receive $.004 to $.008 per stream, so the most EMI could have grossed for the streams in question is a little over $5,400.

There is a hero in Argentina. In the animated gif below, you'll see a white van stalled on the train tracks. With no time to spare, the passenger on the motorcycle pushes the van to safety and narrowly escapes being hit by the train himself.

When I stumbled across this gif, I didn't believe it. A little Googling reveals it's true. Here's the full length video from the Municipality of Tigre camera.

More than 330 cameras monitor the different points of Tigre which allow police to stop criminals, detect fires and accidents or take pictures of reckless drivers and heroes.

Back in November, my daughter didn't know how to skate let alone play hockey. When she hit the ice, she'd attempt to stay on her feet by taking little steps. That's not skating, that's walking on ice.

We enrolled in the Swansea Hockey Association's Learn To Play Hockey program. I say "we" because a parent can accompany the child on the ice in this program. This was my third year in a row skating at Rennie Park each Saturday morning, having participated in the program the last two years with my son who has since graduated to House League.

For one hour every Saturday, my daughter not only worked on her skating, but learnt the fundamentals of hockey; everything from receiving a pass and skating backwards, to stick handling and crossovers. Three months in and the improvement is extraordinary. Here's video of her skating this morning in warmups.

I absolutely love this rink at Rennie Park, home to the largest outdoor hockey league in the world. The only downside to playing outdoors is that the seasons are a little shorter, so my son's team played their final regular season game today and my daughter and I only have one more week of Learn To Play Hockey.

I hate to see these Learn To Play Hockey seasons end because nothing's better than skating alongside your child while he or she learns this fabulous sport. Luckily, I get one more year of this before being permanently relegated to the sidelines.

Custom and I have been buds for the better part of the past decade, so I actually had his permission to upload the vid. It's his one hit and sort of notorious because it was banned by MTV.

Because I'm hosting the video, I get an email every time someone comments on it. It's always amusing to read people's take on this song - it seems people either love it or hate it.

missingt00th hates it. Here's what he just wrote.

Who cares about the derogatory lyrics? The comments that should be lining this page are ones about how shit of a song it is. It's a song that a 7 year-old could write, both musically and lyrically. A fucking useless sack of shit. Bad songwriting - constant refrain of that annoying chorus, over and over again. This is music for pornstars to listen to while their doing lines of coke off of their mothers' asses. Weak shit for tasteless morons. Trying to sound all foo fighters on top of it.

Have you heard about the GHTL fight club? Before games, members of the Vaughan Panthers blow off steam and warm up by boxing in the dressing room.

I was once an adolescent male, so this outrage makes me laugh. The Star has "disturbing video" of this "uniquely dangerous pre-game workout". Watch it now.

These kids are actually wearing helmets and hockey gloves, which makes it a great deal more safe than the crap we used to do. Kids today can't get away with anything, because there's always someone in the room ready to take video that can be instantly posted online or shared via email.

These Vaughan Panthers should be ashamed of themselves. There's no room for helmets in a true fight club.

I'm playing out the tail end of my second season of hockey after a 21 year hiatus.

I'm on the ice every Friday night, working my ass off and having a blast. Although my skating needs work, I'm pretty decent with the puck and I'm usually good for two goals a game. Only once, however, have I recorded a hat trick, and shortly after potting that third goal I left for the hospital with a separated shoulder.

Yesterday, it all came together. A hat trick and not a cheapy in the bunch. And no injury to speak of.

My friend lent me his Hulk DVD which I watched this morning. When I started the DVD three or four coming attractions began to play. Immediately I pressed the MENU button but this function was disabled. There was also no way to advance or fast forward to escape these commercials. Essentially, I had to sit through almost five minutes of crap I had no interest in before I could advance to the main menu to play the movie. It was extremely irritating and had me cursing Universal Studios before the 137 minute movie even began.

If you're buying or downloading pirated movies, this will make you feel better.

It's no wonder this CTV / Rogers consortium forked over major dough in order to broadcast these Olympic games. In this age of the PVR / DVR, advertisements are virtually invisible, with one exception: live sports.

The only time I see ads on television are during live sporting events, and since Friday night, 99% of my television viewing has been these 2010 Olympics on a CTV or Rogers station. And I have to watch them live, which means catching more ads this month than I have in the previous year. The Olympics is an event worth investing in, you'd think.

CBC got outbid by CTV to broadcast these games, and for the past few weeks I've been hearing various rumours from insiders at CTV and other media companies regarding two subjects: imminent headcount reduction at CTV and possible selling of future Olympic rights by CTV to CBC.

Let's take a look at that first topic I've been hearing all over the place lately. Speculation is that immediately following these Olympics CTV will announce a substantial round of firings/layoffs. I hope I'm wrong, I don't want anyone to lose their job, but there's a lot of smoke here.

As for the Olympics, this CTV/Rogers consortium has the rights to 2012 in London. It's possible these rights could be flipped back to CBC for the right price. Personally, I hope this does happen. I preferred the CBC Olympic coverage to the coverage I've been watching this past week from Vancouver.

Oh... and look for Lloyd Robertson to assume a reduced role in the not to distant future. CTV would never can the living legend, but they're ready for him to step aside now.

If you'd like to join in on this Canadian media speculation, please feel free to do so in the comments. If you're an insider with details, contact me and we can play Woodward and Bernstein.

I'm addicted to the winter Olympics these days and totally psyched about our men's hockey team. Of course, that means an entry about the 1992 Toronto Blue Jays.

The B-R Blog & Stat of the Day has pointed out that David Weathers remains as the last active player to play on a World Series winning team from 1992 or earlier. David Weathers made 2 insignificant August appearances for the Jays back in '92 in order to qualify for this esteemed honour.

Assuming he doesn't retire, Carlos Delgado is the only active player from our 1993 World Series championship team, but Delgado has just a slightly higher profile than David Weathers, who I had no idea was still active.

39-year old David Weathers appeared in 25 games for the 2009 Milwaukee Brewers. He's the last champion standing.

I share an MP3 from my collection every Wednesday. You have seven days to grab this week's MP3. Please right-click your mouse and select "Save Link As..." or "Save target as..." so you can download it to your PC before playing.

Neil Young - Heart of GoldCTV is playing their Olympic anthem ad nauseum. It's called "I Believe" and it's sung by Nikki Yanofsky and CTV likes to set montages to it every time a Canadian reaches the podium. Essentially, CTV takes these inspiring, amazing Canadian moments of triumph and tarnishes them by tying them to this awful tune.

When a Canadian wins gold at these Olympic games, I'd much rather hear Neil Young's "Heart of Gold". CTV, this one's for you.

The challenge was simple. Take a longtime Firefox user who is reliant on his FF extensions and get him to switch to Google Chrome.

On February 7th, I updated Chrome and installed a series of extensions that would perform the work of my old Firefox add-ons. If you're curious as to which extensions I installed, all the deets are in this entry.

Google Chrome is now ready for prime time. The extensions available are many and awesome. Here's my extension toolbar as it looks right now.

I still plan to keep my portable version of Firefox up to date, and when I need a second browser instance it will get the call, but I'm going to stick with Chrome as my default browser. It's come a long way, baby.

I was pretty psyched about the 500-metre speedskating event last night. Like all of you, I was rooting heavily for Jeremy Wotherspoon.

My anticipation quickly turned to embarrassment when the Olympia ice-resurfacing machines couldn't cut the mustard. It was a comedy of errors. The first Olympia machine dumped snow and water about 20 metres from the inner lane's finish line Sunday and the second Olympia did the same thing yesterday during a scheduled resurfacing.

That caused a major delay while the third unit was hauled out for an emergency flood. I understand these ice-resurfacing machines were chosen because they run on electricity, but this is no time to be carbon-neutral. This is the time for a Zamboni.

Maybe, Canadian Kyle Parrott suggested, they should have gone with a Zamboni.

"Zambonis work," Parrott told The Canadian Press.

Indeed, in a late-day announcement Monday, the Vancouver organizing committee known as VANOC declared they would be doing exactly that. A Zamboni ice resurfacer from Calgary was to be on the ice by Tuesday, they said.

This one is a few days old now, but it's worth an entry. Meredith Vieira, who was on NBC talking about Betty Fox, speculated that as mother of "Michael Fox…who suffered from cancer, he started that marathon of hope" she might actually be the person who would light the Olympic cauldron.

I can almost accept the slip of the tongue, but the kicker is when NBC throws up a picture of Michael J. Fox to ensure Americans know exactly who Meredith Vieira is talking about.

My youngest child just got her first email account. She now knows how to login to her Gmail account and send emails and gchats to her parents, brother, grandmother and uncles.

My oldest child got his first account when he was five, and it really helped him learn to type, spell and successfully navigate web apps. Today, it was Michelle's turn to enter the digital fray. We fleshed out her contacts (the only people she's allowed to email are those I bless in her contacts), gave her a cool profile picture, changed her Gmail theme to "tea party" and taught her how to compose emails and send instant messages.

Nothing's cooler than getting an email from your 5-year old daughter, even when it's just a heart icon. Especially when it's just a heart icon.

I thought I'd miss the cauldron lighting as they opened the 2010 Vancouver Olympics because I was playing hockey. It turns out I got home just in time to see k.d. lang sing one of my all-time favourite songs. The final torchbearers were hockey great Wayne Gretzky, wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen, NBA All-Star Steve Nash, skier Nancy Greene and speedskater Catriona LeMay Doan, who was stuck posing and holding her torch because one of the cauldron lights didn't work.

Then, in an absolutely surreal sequence, The Great One jumped in the back of a pickup with the torch and drove around town. Rumour has it he stoped at Tim Hortons for a double-double.

There was no Terry Fox hologram, as I had hoped. I should have blogged about that six years ago to give them more time to design it.

Here is some of my real-time Twitter reaction as I watched this unfold. Tell me what you thought of the ceremony in the comments.

Just yesterday we were discussing who will be the final torchbearer tonight as the Olympics kick off in Vancouver.

Since I wrote that entry, we've been told it won't be Wayne Gretzky. I'm sure we'll see Wayne tonight, but he won't be the person lighting the Olympic cauldron inside BC Place.

It's safe to say it will be one of these nine people.

Terry Fox

Betty Fox

Wayne Gretzky

Nancy Greene Raine

Rick Hansen

Barbara Ann Scott

Michael J. Fox

Joe Sakic

Gaetan Boucher

Yes, I've included Terry Fox on that list. Terry passed away in 1981, but he's the reason I raise money and run in the Terry Fox Run every year. He continues to inspire my kids, and I sincerely consider him the greatest Canadian.

A hologram of Terry Fox, perhaps with his mother, lighting the Olympic cauldron, makes the most sense. No living Canadian epitomizes the spirit of amateur athletics the way Terry does.

Have you heard we're hosting the winter Olympics this month? It's true, Vancouver narrowly beat out PyeongChang to win the IOC vote almost 7 years ago.

I'll miss most of the opening ceremony due to hockey commitments, but I am naturally curious as to who will be our final torchbearer. Who will take the Olympic toke and light the Olympic cauldron inside BC Place?

Google has announced they're going to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States.

We'll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people.

1 gigabit per second... take a moment to absorb that. Remember how excited we were when we could get 5mbps at home?

Google's experimental fiber network is meant as a strong message to the FCC that American's deserve better broadband. I hope this message isn't lost on the CRTC here in Canada, a true digital ghetto.

David Braley has been announced as the new owner of the Toronto Argonauts. David Braley already owns a CFL team, the British Columbia Lions. David Braley gets to keep both the Lions and the Argos.

In an eight team league, one man owns 25% of the teams. The fact that one man can own more than one team in the same league amazes me. I'm sure there's no other league on the planet that would allow such a thing. Can you imagine MLSE buying a second NHL team, or Rogers owning a second MLB team?

It can't happen because there are strict rules against it. And for good reason. The integrity of the game must be preserved and even the implication of impropriety is unacceptable.

Dove thinks I stink. At least I assume so, because they just sent me a whole bunch of their new Dove Men+Care products.

Here's what came with the nice smelling beauty products.

Dove MEN+CARE is a campaign about the lives of real men. Research commissioned by Dove MEN+CARE found that 80% of Canadian men said that they think they are stereotyped and falsely portrayed in advertising. Dove MEN+CARE is a campaign and new line of products designed to recognize that through a man's journey and life experiences, he reaches a point where he is comfortable in his own skin.

And here I was thinking they were just trying to sell soap!

I must confess, the only beauty care product that touches my skin is a bar of soap in the shower. I'm not even sure what to do with all of this...

I share an MP3 from my collection every Wednesday. You have seven days to grab this week's MP3. Please right-click your mouse and select "Save Link As..." or "Save target as..." so you can download it to your PC before playing.

Adam Giambrone, member of Toronto City Council and chair of the TTC, wants to be mayor of Toronto. Now that his affair with 19-year old university student Kristen Lucas has been revealed, he's got some heat to deal with first.

With a name like Giambrone, the fist natural reaction is to nickname him Giamboner. It's just too easy, and this is a pain I know all too well. In grade six, my teacher anointed me "Boner".

That nickname stuck for a while, until I successfully morphed it into "Booner". But still, Boner creeps up now and then.

I've been searching for the YouTube of audio for years. I'm just looking for a place where I can upload an MP3 and embed the player on my site. I used to like Odeo for this, and then Odeo dropped the ability to upload. Then I started using iMeem, until iMeem was bought by MySpace and disappeared completely. Then, I discovered Houndbite, but it too has bit the dust.

Once more, I was on the hunt for the YouTube of audio. That's when I discovered SoundCloud. SoundCloud only gives you two hours of space for free, but it's exactly what I need to share old Blue Jays songs and Tom Cheek calls.

To demonstrate this new discovery, here's Lloyd Moseby's Shaker's Rap.

Here's hoping SoundCloud sticks around for a while. And if you liked the sample above, you'd love this page.

Unless you live in Indianapolis, or are related to a member of the Indianapolis Colts, you must root for the New Orleans Saints in today's Super Bowl XLIV.

Four and a half years ago, I wondered how they'd ever play football again in the Louisiana Superdome.

How will they return to playing football in the Louisiana Superdome? The official site of the New Orleans Saints only just put up a reference to the disaster plaguing their home city and tickets are available to see the Giants come to town on September 18. The Superdome, currently a hellhole, will soon return to its normal function, but how can it ever be the same? How can one go there to witness something as frivolous as a football game when is has become home to such unspeakable horrors?

The day I wrote that entry, The Seattle Times ran an article describing the hell that had become of the Louisiana Superdome.

At least two people, including a child, have been raped as the arena darkened at night. At least three people have died, including one man who jumped 50 feet to his death, saying he had nothing left to live for.

There is no sanitation. The stench is overwhelming. The city's water supply, which had held up since Sunday, gave out early yesterday, and toilets in the Dome became inoperable and began to overflow. "There is feces on the walls," said Bryan Hebert, 43, who arrived at the dome Monday. "There is feces all over the place."

YouTube user Retrontario frequently uploads fantastic retro-Toronto-centric gems. These clips never fail to bring back a ton of memories for me, so I feature them from time to time.

As a kid, I loved WKRP. I think that's how I first fell in love with radio. One of the many great characters on WKRP was Herb Tarlek, the plaid suit wearing advertising account executive who couldn't score a big account or with Jennifer Marlowe.

Back in 1997, the character Herb Tarlek was resurrected for a television ad campaign promoting the CHFI morning show with Don Daynard and Erin Davis.

Yesterday, I wrote about web browsers. I've been a Firefox user for as long as the Mozilla browser has had that name, and part of the reason I've resisted the switch to Google Chrome is my reliance on the Firefox add-ons. The fact is, Chrome extensions have come a long way over the past six months, and Elvis convinced me it was time to give Chrome another shot.

This entry is about how I configured Chrome to give it a fair shot against my trusty ol' Firefox. I'll concede that Chrome is faster, and that's what has me rooting for this test to be successful.

The most important extension as far as I'm concerned is Adblock+. I simply can't search the web without it. Thankfully, Adblock+ is available in Chrome, so the test may begin.

The other significant change I had to make is how I manage my Twitter account. I love Twitter, and I've been reading and tweeting from a Firefox extension from Echofon. Echofon doesn't make this extension for Chrome, and I hated every Twitter extension for Chrome I tried last night. As a result, I'm giving TweetDeck another shot.

Now let's look at the Google Chrome extensions I installed and why.

AdBlock+ Element Hiding Helper - This is a must have extension. Use it for one day and you won't be able to live without out.

Bit.ly (shorten, share, and track your links) - When I tweet URLS, I shorten them with Bit.ly. It lets me measure clicks.

Copy Without Formatting - Sometimes I need to copy text from the web, but I just want plain text without markup. This extension does the trick.

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google) - I hate it when I click a link on the web to a PDF and it opens in the browser.

Facebook for Google Chrome - Just a nice way to check my FB news feed and wall without going to Facebook.

Forecastfox Weather - I liked this extension in Firefox and I'm glad it's available in Chrome.

IE Tab - Some sites require IE. It's nice to be able to see them without changing browsers.

Pendule - This was my find of the day. I love this extension. It does a number of the things the developer toolbar in Firefox would do, and more. It handles pixel measurement, colour picking, CSS viewing and so much more. Many of the Firefox add-ons I needed for work are satisfied by this single Chrome extension. If you're in web development or management, you have to try Pendule.

Now I just need a way to better handle my bookmarks. I've exported them from Firefox and imported them into Chrome, but I don't love the way Chrome handles them. There's gotta be an extension that'll make me happy.

Chatting with Mississauga Blogger earlier today, we agreed that the Leafs fans love to hate the Habs but just simply hate the Sens. There's no love to hate about it. I just despise that franchise and wish them nothing but failure.

This 5-0 shellacking reminded me of the four playoff series we had against the Senators over the past 15 years. All four ended with justice prevailing. Tonight, the same justice was evident in spades.

There were several things to get excited about. Jean-Sebastien Giguere became the first goaltender in franchise history to open his debut season with back-to-back shutouts, both Phil Kessel and Luke Schenn had three-point nights, and, most importantly, we ended Ottawa's 11 game winning streak.

Using data in Google Analytics, here are the browsers visitors to this site are using. This data was collected over the past 30 days.

Internet Explorer is used by the majority of you, Firefox is a strong second and Safari is a decent third place with a little over 10%. Chrome is the new kid on the block and comes in fourth. No other browser is used by 1% of you.

Here's what your browser says about you.

Chrome - You're a speed freak, looking to get from A to B in as few parsecs as possible. Add-ons be damned, faster is better.

Safari - You're a Mac user and that makes you feel superior to the other 90% of us. Your arrogance is astounding.

Firefox - You hate IE, and that led you to discover Firefox back in 2004. By now you're so dependent on Firefox add-ons you'll never switch, no matter how fast Chrome gets. Your web standards sensibilities and loyalty to the Mozilla Foundation makes you rather endearing.

Internet Explorer - You use the browser that came by default with Windows, and you don't try another browser because you're lazy, disinterested in excellence and without a soul. Yes, I just called 52.39% of you soulless.

The other 1.78% of you using browsers like Camino or Blazer, you're anti-establishment and you frighten me. CSIS has already been notified.

The news hit me tonight like a tonne of bricks. Brian Burke's son, Brendan, had succumbed to injuries he suffered in an auto accident. Brendan was only 21-years old.

The first thing I thought of was my James. I'm sure all fathers can relate to this reaction. I felt the extraordinary love I have for my son, and realized that's how Brian felt about Brendan. Even thinking about losing my son hurt so much I cannot fathom the sadness Brian is feeling. My thoughts are with the Burke family at this hour.

In November, there was quite a bit of coverage here in Toronto about Brian Burke coming out in support of his openly gay son Brendan. I purposely didn't write about that story. Instead, I wrote about the Leafs win over the Lightning. In the comments of that entry, someone asked me why I didn't write about Brian and Brendan. Here's what I wrote.

Brian Burke's son is gay. Brian Burke supports and loves his son regardless. That's how it should be. There's no story there.

As a father, I was seeing it from Brian's vantage point. I didn't want Brian's love and support of Brendan to be a story. I didn't want that to be newsworthy. I wanted that to be commonplace, unexceptional and completely expected.

In retrospect, I should have seen it from Brendan's vantage point. There was in fact a story there. Brendan showed a great deal of courage, coming out as a homosexual male while pursuing a hockey career as the son of a hard nosed "tough guy". Brendan was the inspiring story, not Brian. I was wrong.

That day, I recapped the hockey game instead of giving Brendan the credit he deserved. Tonight, for the first time in almost a decade, I'm not recapping a Leafs game. Instead, I honour Brendan's memory.

Every year in grade school we had to make and present a science project. One year, I did my project on ketchup. I'm an authority on the subject.

There's major news from the ketchup packet industry at this hour. Heinz has revamped their packets.

The redesigned ketchup pack, unveiled Thursday by H.J. Heinz Co., is shaped like a shallow cup. The top can be peeled back for dipping, or the end can be torn off for squeezing. It holds three times as much ketchup as a traditional packet.

In my review of the Blue Rodeo concert at Massey Hall, I mentioned the opening act Dustin Bentall. He was great, but he was best when joined by Kendel Carson. This entry is about Kendel.

I'm not really a country music fan, but I like folksy country rock and ol' bluegrass stuff, like you heard in O Brother Where Art Thou?. I like Blue Rodeo, I hate Keith Urban. I like Johnny Cash, I hate Kenny Chesney. You get the idea...

I loved Kendel Carson last night. Maybe it's because I've always had a thing for the fiddle, but I couldn't get over how good she was. He she was earlier in this tour performing "Oh Baby Lie Down".

Her fiddle solos were outstanding, and she complemented the country rock tones of Dustin Bentall perfectly. You can see her here that same night helping out with "Draft Dodger".

Although classically trained (and eventually a performer in the National Youth Orchestra and a featured soloist with the Victoria Symphony), Carson’s musical passion lied in the folk, country and rock scenes – especially after her family moved out West. “There’s an amazing roots scene out in Victoria,” she says. “That became my primary influence. It’s a really community-minded spirit out there. It’s inspiring.”

Give this chick a fiddle and a little room, and the world's her oyster.

I've had a soft spot in my heart for Toronto Grace since watching Allan King's excellent documentary "Dying at Grace". It's about five patients dying in the Palliative Care Unit of the Salvation Army Toronto Grace Health Centre. We meet them, spend time with them and then we watch them die. It's terribly chilling, totally effective, and in many ways, absolutely reassuring.

If you ever get a chance to see Dying at Grace, I strongly urge you to do so.

Last night, I was at Massey Hall to see Blue Rodeo. I've been a Blue Rodeo fan since 1987 when the DJ we hired for our grade school dance told us he was going to spin us a new one and I heard "Try" for the first time. And if you're going to see a band you like, there really is no better forum in the city of Toronto than Massey Hall. The acoustics are perfect.

I was having a blast before Blue Rodeo even hit the stage. Dustin Bentall opened, and he was joined by Kendel Carson. I wasn't familiar with either artist before I heard them last night, but together they were absolutely amazing. I'm giving Kendel an entry all to herself because she blew my little mind. Stay tuned for that one.

Here's a little of Dustin Bentall and Kendel Carson (she's the blond playing the violin) warming us up last night.

When it comes to Blue Rodeo, you're either a Cuddy or a Keelor guy. Sure, many love both, but everyone has a preference. I've always been a Keelor guy, and last night reminded me why. This is no knock against Cuddy, who has sang the national anthem at 2 out of the last 3 Leafs games I've seen live, but Keelor's worth the price of admission on his own. He's got the cool voice and the cool parts, and if he wants to extend "Diamond Mine" another 20 minutes, I'm perfectly okay with that.

Here he is instructing the Massey Hall crowd before Cuddy came in to order us on our feet.

That leads nicely to my only criticism of the night. This is the first concert I've attended where we all sat on our seats until the encore, and I've been to many, many concerts. Was it because it's Massey Hall? Was it because it's Blue Rodeo? I'm not sure, but nobody stood and it didn't feel natural. I believe I've ranted on this subject before...

Here's the finale, Blue Rodeo joined by Dustin Bentall and Kendel Carson for "Lost Together".

A big thanks to my mom, who responded brilliantly to my request to receive no stuff this Christmas. She bought me the perfect gift, a ticket to see a great band at Massey Hall. This was the third concert I had ever seen with my mom, joining Kid Rock at the Molson Amp and The Tragically Hip at Fort York.

I share an MP3 from my collection every Wednesday. You have seven days to grab this week's MP3. Please right-click your mouse and select "Save Link As..." or "Save target as..." so you can download it to your PC before playing.

I had horseshoes up my ass for this one. Ford invited me to sit in their super amazing 3rd row seats just beside the Leafs penalty box just as I was hating my favourite team, and then a miracle happened. This game became a big deal.

I kept a very close eye on the three newbies, and all three played a great game. Here's a shot I took of Dion Phaneuf.

J.S. Giguère got a shutout, Dion Phaneuf had us chanting his name with big hits and a fight, and even Fredrik Sjostrom looked great, getting a point. You'd have thought this one was scripted.

Early in the first, Dion Phaneuf sat beside me for five minutes. That was pretty surreal.

Lest we forget our new goaltender, who was just solid. The only other Leaf goalie to get a shutout in his first game was Eddie Belfour. Here's Giggy, still wearing his Ducks mask.

There was an extraordinary energy in the ACC last night, and we were loud throughout. I thought we might all head to Yonge street after the final buzzer.

A big thanks to Ford Canada for inviting me. They gave me the best seat I've ever had for a Leafs game, access to their luxury suite where I could eat and drink whatever I wanted, and... and this was the most surprising part to me... there was absolutely no sales pitch at any time. No speech about their new line of automobiles, no slideshow about their new promotion, nothing. They just wanted me to have a good time, and I had a great time. Thanks, Ford!

Today is Groundhog Day, and every morning radio or television show felt obliged to tell you whether Punxsutawney Phil in Pennsylvania, Shubenacadie Sam in Nova Scotia or Wiarton Willie saw their respective shadows.

I've peeled back the curtain to look at the science behind these supposed indicators, and I've come to the conclusion that it's nothing more than junk science. You cannot gauge the amount of winter remaining based on whether a rodent saw its shadow or not.

Like a sucker, I watched the Grammy Awards last night. I PVR'd the show and started it about 45 minutes in, so I could skip the commercials. I never like the Grammies, but I always feel compelled to watch them for some reason.

The music was once again mediocre. Actually, this year I felt the music was worse than usual, and that's saying something. As bad as the bulk of the performances were, nothing was as horrible as the performance by Jamie Foxx and T-Pain. The song, entitled "Blame It", was just about the most awful thing my ears have ever had the displeasure of hearing, and I like rap.

What did you think? I couldn't believe how bad it was (Slash's solo excepted - Slash performing the solo from November Rain almost saved this steaming pile of shite) and my second time through it, it's even worse than I remembered. I blame Auto-Tune.

Auto-Tune is horrible. It should be reserved for the news. I blame Cher for starting the Auto-Tune fad, and it's gotten completely out of control. Jamie Foxx and T-Pain (if that's his real name - I suspect it's not) should be ashamed. Auto-Tune isn't just cheating, it's killing popular music.

Last Friday night, during what was the coldest night of the decade, I met Terri and Mark from Light Monkey Photography. We met at a very cool old brick building in the middle of a park in Liberty Village and they shot me (with a camera, not a gun).

Light Monkey Photography is diversifying their offerings, and now create photo avatars for use in social media profiles, like Twitter and Facebook. Here are some shots of me, taken outside in -35°C conditions.

Terri and Mike were fantastic to work with and they're very accommodating and reasonably priced. Whether you need avatar pics, corporate head shots or just want to update the family pictorial, I urge you to contact them at info@lightmonkey.ca or 647 342 3603.

You've got to love Andy Barrie. He's been hosting Toronto's CBC Radio One program Metro Morning since 1995 and is one of the finest broadcasters working in this city. His Metro Morning has always been a favourite of mine.

This morning, on his 65th birthday, he announced that he's retiring and that his last show will take place the morning of March 1. After 15 years he deserves a chance to sleep in past 4am.

I've been running blogs on the Movable Type platform for years. Over that time, I've witnessed the ebb and flow of comment spam. Anyone who manages a blog is familiar with comment spam and has a strategy implemented to fight it.

I've detected a comment spam spike over the past two months. In my efforts to fight comment spam, I moderate any comment that contains a keyword on my blacklist, and I carefully maintain this list. Still, comment spam finds a way.

Thankfully, it's easy to detect comment spam.

1. Only comment spam compliments the design of your site. I can't tell you how often comment spam tells me "great design" or asks "how do I get that theme?". Comment spam is my biggest fan.

2. Only comment spam thanks you for writing the "article". Comment spam makes you feel like Ernest Hemingway for creating an abundance of genius prose.

3. Comment spam always agrees with your opinions, no matter how ridiculous. I just saw one that read "I do not generally comment on blog posts but I had to drop by and tell you thanks for writing this, I fully agree and hopefully folks will see where you are coming from." I think comment spam would make a great friend.

4. Regular people have names like Paul, Sam or Abigail, or handles like Big Bruce, Cynical T or Top Dawg. Comment spam comes from folks named "free pharmaceuticals", "double neck bass guitar" or "lost weight fast".

5. Comment span is usually left on completely irrelevant entries from years and years ago. That comment on why Paul Martin should send the DART to help with the tsunami relief is probably comment spam.

I hate comment spam, but it's nice to hear from those who like the design, agree with my thoughts and are grateful I took the time to write it. Even if they're named free-online-poker or enhancement pills. Beggars can't be choosers.